Everything isn’t out of your control!  There really are things you can do. 

The health crisis and restaurant closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are finally starting to wind down.  But trouble for the restaurant industry isn’t over yet.  Now we find ourselves in an unprecedented labor shortage and the “great resignation.”

With dine-in business picking back up and most off-premise business staying significantly stronger than pre-COVID numbers, there is now a surge in customer / guest demand.  Unfortunately, most restaurants are not comfortably meeting that demand.  Businessinsider.com quotes a study of 3,000 restaurant operators that found 7 out of 10 operators reported not having enough employees to support the demand at their restaurants.

Most industry experts and economists say that this labor shortage is out of our control, and we just have to learn to live with it.  However, there IS something you can do about restaurant labor.  And it’s more straightforward than you might think.

Every restaurateur can significantly reduce labor issues by improving the efficiency of their facility and operation to make it easier for their current employees to do their jobs.

They can even decrease the number of staff required at any given time.  These improvements have a huge impact on employee turn-over.  A friend and former Yum Brands executive told me this story that proves this point.

Several years ago, Yum Brands was struggling with high turnover.  From HR’s perspective, they were doing everything right — they offered market leading wages, time-off, benefits, etc.  Yet they still faced higher-than-average turn-over.  So, in classic Yum Brands fashion, they did an extensive survey on why people were leaving.  What they discovered offers a true paradigm shift from most conventional thinking.  They found that most of their employees really wanted to do a good job and excel at their role.  But they were being impeded from doing so because equipment, facilities, and technology were sub-standard or simply didn’t work.  This led to frustration and ultimately to employee turnover.

So, what if you change YOUR thinking about the labor shortage by leveraging what Yum Brands discovered?

To get started, evaluate your operation, your facilities, your equipment, and your technology.  If any of it is sub-standard, outdated or broken, you are giving your valued employees a valid reason to leave and work somewhere else.  When Yum shifted to this perspective and made the necessary changes, they went from below average to industry leading employee retention.

Doing this at your restaurant may seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be.

Restaurant brands across the country can find simple ways to improve all these areas throughout their restaurant portfolio to yield strong returns on relatively small additional investments.

These changes show staff that you’re investing in them and helping them to succeed at their jobs.  For example, there are many new innovations in cooking automation, “smart” equipment, and integrated technology that make it much easier and more efficient for minimally skilled employees to produce true quality food and service.   I’m not talking about robot pizza makers or tortilla friers, but incremental upgrades to equipment and technology that are appropriate to your operation.

Let’s look at some concrete examples where these types of improvements made a significant impact on back-of-house labor in two different burger concepts.  One concept was using large manually controlled flat griddles to grill their burgers.  The second concept previously chargrilled their burgers on a 6’ open chargrill.  Two very different styles of cooking burgers that resulted in the same problems:

    • They both required constant attention from the grill cooks;
    • It was almost impossible to achieve consistent results without fairly skilled employees; and
    • At busy times, it also required at least 2 grill cooks to keep up with the volume.

To address this, the flat top griddle concept changed to ‘clam shell style’ griddles with solid state controls.  The chargrilled concept changed to conveyor type enclosed charbroilers.  These fairly simple changes allowed one cook to grill the burgers in almost half the time with flawless consistency.  Because the new semi-automated equipment cooks so quickly and accurately without needing constant attention, it allowed both concepts to go from multiple grill cooks down to a single cook who could handle even their highest volumes.

These changes also reduced the footprint of the grill from 6’ to 4’, which helped tighten up the rest of the cookline.  So, one cook can more easily work the entire cookline during off-peak times further reducing the need for skilled labor.

In both cases the more advanced automated cooking solutions required about $35,000 – $40,000 higher initial investment.  Both paid for themselves in approximately 6-9 months and then generated significant labor savings after that.

To take advantage of these ideas for your own concept, all that’s required is:

    • A fresh look at your operation;
    • Expertise in design and foodservice equipment;
    • Unbiased knowledge of these innovative technologies; and
    • A methodical approach to determining which are appropriate for your brand.

Making strategic changes such as these isn’t going to create a larger restaurant workforce – that truly is out of anyone’s control.  But it WILL help you:

    • Retain your current staff;
    • Make that staff more efficient; and
    • Minimize the number of employees you need to efficiently provide great food and service.

In today’s world, that can make all the difference between just getting by vs thriving with a happy customer base.